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ASI News 3 October 2009

I thought you would be interested in my new column on the Marc Lamont Hill scandal involving Fox News.

The Extreme Makeover of Fox News Analyst Marc Lamont Hill

AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | October 2, 2009

Who would plaster his Twitter page with police mug shot photos of convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur? Fox News contributor Marc Lamont Hill did. At least until David Horowitz and Accuracy in Media took notice and wrote about it. Now the page features photos of boxing great Muhammad Ali. Hill's MySpace page is also gone.

There are other changes as well. The tributes to Shakur and black racist Khallid Muhammad, known as "America's Black Hitler," have disappeared from his web pages. The articles were saved, however, and can be found here.

Remember that Hill had claimed that he hadn't written the tribute to the cop-killer, and that it had been posted under his name and written by someone else, even though it was signed, "Marc." The claim was difficult to take seriously. There was no confusion about the Muhammad piece, since it included personal references to Hill's growing-up years. That article concluded, "'I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU DR. KHALLID."

Meanwhile, Fred Gielow's excellent new book, "I Can't Believe You Said That!," has been published, with a section on Muhammad. Considering some of the statements reproduced in this book, one can understand why the tribute to him would be taken off Hill's website. But we are still left wondering why it was there in the first place. You will recall that Hill, who appears regularly on "The O'Reilly Factor," had described Muhammad as "a mentor, teacher, and revolutionary hero." In Gielow's book, Muhammad is quoted as declaring in1995, "This is the time of the black man's rise and the white man's demise." This quote is rather mild, compared to what he said in his 1996 "Kill the White Man" speech to a black audience:

Fox analyst Hill has declared his belief that the brain aneurysm that claimed Muhammad's life was somehow deliberately induced by outside forces and that Muhammad was "assassinated."

This was also the implication of a January 12, 2004, release from the New Black Panther Party under the title of "Was Khallid Abdul Muhammad Assassinated?" The organization explained, "If the enemy can kill our leaders and be comfortable that no investigation will take place, the enemy will continue his mischief."

The report includes some other controversial quotes. Muhammad is actually quoted as telling his supporters, "If I slip on a bar of soap in the shower, goddammit, the white man did it!"

The apparent attempt to sanitize the web pages of Marc Lamont Hill will not be successful. All of the offensive material has been retained. Indeed, Internet archives have produced some other revealing material about the Fox News Channel contributor.

On December 6, 2006, when reports indicated that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was sick, Fox News contributor Marc Lamont Hill declared on his blog that he was afraid the information might be true. "My fears about Fidel's health are not only personal but political," he wrote.

"This past week," he wrote, "Cuba celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, as well as Fidel Castro's 80th birthday. Despite the huge number of dignitaries, aging revolutionaries, and fellow citizens in attendance, El Comandante was not in attendance. While a no-show at this type of event is curious for any leader, it is unthinkable for Fidel, who thrives on such moments. In fact, the only thing that could keep him away is the very thing that scares me the most: Fidel was too sick to attend."

The thought of this dictator dying was just too much for Hill to take.

When Hugo Chavez was elected in Venezuela, Hill declared, "In the wake of Fidel's declining significance, Chavez has quickly emerged as the loudest political voice of Latin America, as well as one of the world's most prominent and powerful anti-imperialist heads-of-state."

Hill is still listed as one of the "emerging black thinkers" and "scholars" who blogs at the Root, a Web magazine associated with Obama friend Henry Louis Gates and launched by the Washington Post Company. Gates, of course, is the black Harvard academic defended by Obama after he charged a white police officer with racism for arresting him as he was breaking into his home. The police had been called to the scene by a neighbor concerned that a robbery was taking place. While the charges were dropped, the police officer who arrested Gates for disorderly conduct was defended by black and white officers alike for his professionalism. Obama, however, said that the police had acted "stupidly."

Back in February 2008, Hill wrote that he thought Barack Obama was too much of a moderate. "For many black people," he wrote, "Obama's success would provide symbolic value by showing that the black man (not woman!) can make it to the top. Although black faces in high places may provide psychological comfort, they are often incorporated into a Cosbyesque gospel of personal responsibility ('Obama did it, so can you!') that allows dangerous public policies to go unchallenged."

Hill warned about "the triple threat of global racism, poverty, and militarism" and warned that Obama may not turn out to be "the revolutionary outsider that he's portrayed to be."

He also declared, "Obama has been conspicuously silent on topics such as the prison industrial complex, the Zionist occupation of Palestine, and the economic underdevelopment of Africa."

One item has not disappeared from Hill's web page. An entry on his curriculum vitae, under the heading of "Recent Conference Papers, Presentations, and Invited Lectures," still includes "January 2006, The Importance of Ideological Training in the New Millenium [sic]. Invited Speaker at Polymathematic University (Political Education Progam for the Poor Righteous Communist Party)." Actually, the name of the group is the Poor Righteous Party of the Black Nation. It is a communist group of the Maoist kind, however.

Strangely, the CV also lists the following: "February 2007, From Slavery To Hip-Hop. Keynote Address at Federal Bureau of Investigation (Newark Divison) Black History Celebration." What will Hill's comrades in the Poor Righteous Party of the Black Nation think when they find out that he spoke to the FBI?

What's more, why is Fox News silent about the entire controversy, other than issuing a one-sentence statement early on that it did not share Hill's views on terrorist cop-killer Assata Shakur?

This is an online snapshot of a newsletter created by the owner of asinews (America's Survival Inc., www.usasurvival.org, 20736 Owings, United States) and sent via GetResponse on 2009-10-02. Report abuse